As a result of such reviews and the box office success of the films, my life was changing again. My star was even brighter in Little Tokyo, where I could hardly step out of my apartment now without someone requesting an autograph. The money from my contract—I was making $100 a week—was much more than I had ever imagined. It enabled me to buy fine clothes and a fast little town car. It also allowed me to rent a six-room house in Pico Heights, one of the few areas outside of Little Tokyo and Boyle Heights where it was possible for Japanese to live.
It is hard to describe, now, the heady atmosphere of those first few years of Hollywood. The modest film operations of New York City had moved to the wider, warmer region of Los Angeles, where, like seedlings suddenly exposed to water and light, they shot up and flourished unchecked. Soon, the films made in Los Angeles were being shown across the country, and then, in due time, across the world. And any young person with talent and desire might find himself swept up in the tide. A penniless ranch hand might be plucked from the hopefuls who gathered each day at Gower Gulch and be transformed into a highly paid star. A young woman walking down the street, lingering at store windows, might be spotted by a director, who might cast her as the heroine of his next film. An unknown Japanese university graduate, putting on a production of Shakespeare, might be seen by the head of a film company, who might decide he has a quality and a burgeoning talent that would translate well to the screen.
It happened just that quickly, that unexpectedly, and it happened for those who made the films as well. William Moran was a traveling auto mechanic before he became a director; Marshall Neilan had been a chauffeur; W.S. Van Dyke had worked as a lumberjack and gold miner; and Mack Sennett was a blacksmith before entering pictures and opening his famous studio. It didn’t matter that these men lacked formal education and had not spent years working on their craft. No one had. The industry was totally new, and the directors’ relative lack of refinement actually worked to their advantage, for they had no pretenses, they were willing to work round the clock, and they all told wonderful stories. These men were real people, often from the working classes, and that grasp of life, that authenticity, made its way onto the screen. Even the classically trained theater men like Ashley Bennett Tyler—the Englishman who directed several of my films before his untimely death—were of this resolute and entrepreneurial breed. And nobody—not the directors, not the actors, not the cameramen, not the carpenters who made the sets or the property men who furnished them—complained about the hard work or the long hours. We were all delighted to be there. We were at the nascent stages of something totally new, something wonderful, and everybody knew it.
It was in the spirit of this excitement that I attended the party in Whitley Heights. I do not recall the occasion— people needed little excuse to have a party—but the event drew at least a hundred people. I had driven with Moran, who had also brought his young wife, Margaret; Hanako Minatoya, who disliked such functions, had not accompanied us. After we made our way through the living room to give our regards to the host, we ventured out to the garden area, where a band was playing and several quick-moving men in tuxedos were serving drinks and hors d’oeuvres. It was lovely outside, and elegant couples were dancing around the garden. Every now and then peals of laughter would rise above the general clamor, loud bursts of joy that broke out of the crowd and floated off into the warm, clear night.
We took glasses of champagne from one of the waiters and scanned the lively crowd. Well-wishers approached and gave their regards, then wandered off again. Although I was starting to enjoy these functions, I did not yet feel at ease enough to stray from Moran’s side; guests at earlier parties, assuming I was a servant, had tried to give me their dirty plates. That night, as always, the only people I spoke with were the ones who came to us. Now, it was the director and producer Gerard Normandy. He was, despite his romantic name, an unimposing man—short and slight, with thinning hair and round glasses. Even with his thick cigar and glass half-full of whiskey, he looked like a boy beside Moran’s imposing frame. He engaged Moran and his wife in a discussion about editing, and my attention began to wander.
Then I spotted a young woman about twenty feet away. She was standing in front of a tall stone fountain, talking to a group of men in tuxedos, resting one hand on the curve of her hip as she inhaled a cigarette from a long silver holder. The men stood around her in a semi-circle, and it was clear from their stance, and from the way she tossed her head, that they were entirely at her mercy. I immediately understood why. The woman was lovely. She had thick chestnut hair that fell about her shoulders in impossibly round curls, a shapely figure whose curves were echoed by the outline of the fountain, and a knowing smile that, when she first displayed it, made my stomach fly up into my throat. Unlike so many of the other young women in Hollywood, then as well as now, she did not appear eager or innocent. There was something in the shape of her eyes and the set of
